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A week in the life of the school...

This week’s blog will take a slightly different tack – I want to share the activities and year groups involved over the last week at the school. Those of you on Twitter, our preferred and immediate connection with parents and carers, may be aware of some of these events.

The half term break saw the return of our intrepid Iceland explorers who attended, what sounds and looks like, the adventure of a lifetime, looking at natural phenomena and some fantastic geographical sites. The trip wouldn’t have been possible without the planning and presence of Ms Clarke, accompanied by Mr Ali and Ms Saunders.

So what does a week look like at Hornsey?

On Monday we had silver medallist Cath Bishop working with a number of students around leadership and key skills. She also held an assembly with all of year 11 – linking the countdown to exams to how to stay motivated. It is fantastic that the partnership developed with the Sky Academy allows for this kind of interaction.

As that was going on, we also hosted the SSE Women’s FA cup 5th round draw. I will add links to some of the coverage we had at the end of this blog, but again, we shared the experience with all of year 7, and some of years 8, 9, 11, and our 6th formers.

Some year 12’s were not in attendance, having been whisked away by the Geography team again for a field work trip to Canary Wharf.

I’d be pleased if this was the offer for our students for one week, as already the above events would have reached 370 students, with something unusual and unique in addition to the normal curriculum. It didn’t stop there though.

We also had over 220 students visit from Lordship Lane Primary, Chestnuts Primary and North Haringey Primary who came along and participated in a creative writing day. This was led by our fantastic English team, working in collaboration with the Performing and Creative Arts opening, to focus students on writing with panache and creativity. We had brilliant feedback from students and staff present, both our own and those visiting from primaries.

Not to be left behind, Mr Davies was working with Rokesly Juniors on a Science workshop on the same day. It was fantastic to see the students at lunch working off some energy before returning for completing activities and presenting to parents. Our year 9 helpers supported the day, and they were a credit, to the school, themselves and their families. Keen, organised, focused and supportive throughout, a real sense of the confidence the school can support and develop in our young people.

It doesn’t end there for us either! Our year 12’s took part in a presentation training session, something that will support them as they aim high for pastures past our 6th form, and mentors from the Access project continued their excellent work with a wide range of our 6th formers.

We take mentoring seriously as a tool to support and develop aspiration, and recognise that by starting young we will have more impact, so we were really pleased that 45 of our year 10 and 11 have been matched with industry specific mentors as our partnership with the Girl’s Network embeds further. This gives our students access to mentors already doing the jobs they aspire to, and helps them understand what skills and areas they should be focusing on to be successful.

We ended the week with year 10, taking part in a workshop focusing on resilience and overcoming adversity, a key skill which will serve our students well in an ever changing, ever challenging world. This was hosted with Blesmma - an organisation working with army veterans who had suffered trauma or amputation.

A rough calculation has me thinking that all of these events added an experience or event to approximately 500 of our students. In addition to our teaching and learning, which remains securely good (with outstanding features) it feels like our students and staff should be wearing their Hornsey identity with more pride then they usually do!

I am exceedingly proud of the staff and students at Hornsey School for Girls. I had the opportunity to share this with Headteachers across London at the London Mayors Education conference where I was asked to speak at one of the panel events about girls in STEM as well as being interviewed about key issues like the funding cuts for the BBC. We will continue to do all we can to offer our students opportunities like these in the future regardless of the government agenda. You always invest in the future, and we take that to heart.